Hidden Gem
by emiiko
Summary: Take me away from all the things I'm running from, kiss me with those lips and shatter me with that stinging magnificence that is your shell.


**Hidden Gem**

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The scent of jasmine was sickening, burning into his nostrils as he drank another beer from its bottle. He stopped counting after the seventh and the bartender stopped asking. Sand was practically tattooed to his skin, dipping into his freckles like bumps that would never be washed away from a day at the beach.

A wisp of brown hair caught Edward's attention and suddenly jasmine didn't smell so bad. He imagined it was dabbed on the woman's neck, wrists and maybe near her chest where she was tan, golden. He thought she looked French or a combination of French and Spanish and wondered what her skin looked like away from Mexico's sun of fire. She was a walking magazine cover with piercing eyes and bright cherry lips; the kind that made his hands wander downwards, bracing himself for the inevitable stand up of his erect cock.

He ran his jarred tongue over his bitter, chalky lips and stared at her frame, memorizing the curves of hips meeting legs, thighs dipping into calves. Then his eyes raised upwards again, smoothly over her not too small, not too large breasts, resonating with his insides, as perfect. Her long, silky looking hair blew in the wind, behind her but she didn't move to stop it.

"Strawberry margarita," She said to the young, Mexican bartender, tapping her long manicured fingertips along the glazed wood. He watched the rhythm of her fingertips before she stopped, circling her hand around the wet, slimy glass with a long straw and no umbrella. Edward wondered why she didn't get one like all the other female customers, maybe she was a regular or just too beautiful to sustain such cheesiness. He wanted to call out something about buying her drink but it would've been too cliché and if there was anything he hated, it was being cliché.

The waves crashed behind them, up on the tiny cliff where rock met water and tourists watched like animals out of their cages. White taxis honked to get people out of the way, since stop lights didn't exist and the club down the street pumped loud music over everyone's voices and charged way too much for a drink. To his surprise the deity walked over to him in what seemed like slow motion and jasmine smelled so unlike all the women he'd left back in Chicago that he wanted to breathe her in till he passed out from her maddening exquisiteness. He'd known attractive women his whole life of course and yet whatever her name was, she slammed the brakes on all of them.

"I see you here a lot," she whispered her accent showing a tint of French but no Spanish. She sipped her drink with her pinky out like some dainty little girl, unaware of how precious she looked.

Edward thought about how he'd never seen her and wondered for a flash of a second if she'd come to take him back to his non-existent home. Last year, his parents sent Tanya to Cabo to seduce him into returning to the States, in the hopes that he would ease back into his old life. He can't remember the last time he touched a girl or even wanted to. He pushed his seat back, away from the tempting woman with Lolita full lips. At first he thought he wouldn't respond, just do one of his infamous smirks and down the rest of the beer, slip away into the night back to the hotel two miles away.

"Oh yeah, Lolita, how's that?" Edward asked, not one word coming out slurred. He had learned to hold his liquor, especially after three months in Cozumel where people drank just as they did on the mainland. He was fully aware of her eyes watching him like a deadly, frightening hawk. She stirred the straw around, before taking another sip.

"I work at the club on eleventh. I pass by here sometimes and I see you from across the street," She answered, stripping her eyes off him. Her blue silk sewn, lacy top clung to all the right spots. He bit into his lips trying not to stare, but he'd always had a problem with staring at such things, especially anything dangling on a beautiful, goddess-looking woman like herself.

"I'm Isabella." She held out her hand for him to take but he ignored it, afraid to touch her.

Isabella stared at him for a minute before putting the half empty drink onto the counter and turned to the bartender, who, Edward realized, she had an obvious association with. "It's on him," and she walked away through the sea of people. Her dark hair was lost in the crowd.

Edward sighed and stood up a few seconds later, kicking the stool away from his feet and threw three twenties down next to the still half full bottle of beer. He steered clear of hot, sweaty bodies as he made his way to the stairs where he stopped and took a good look around for Isabella's noticeable figure. He saw nothing but the ocean, colored as a deep blue under a half moon and people walking up the street towards the main square. He sighed, brushing his fingers through his already tussled hair. He closed his eyes trying to regain his composure but his heart wouldn't stop pounding, blasting a loud echo in his ears.

Edward opened his eyes and skipped down the steps, two at a time. He decided his best bet at finding her to apologize for not being more agreeable, or at least polite, was to follow the crowd to the main square. He passed by the shops and the bank before he caught another glimpse of brown hair.

There she was, hair swung back against her shoulders, dancing to the mariachi band playing under the gazebo. She smiled at him, to his surprise and waved him over. Edward twisted around to make sure there was no one around him she could've been waving at, but there was no one there. Her smile was like a vacuum and once she flashed it at him even in their short distance apart he knew he was done for.

"I'm sorry for before," he said, embarrassed and stuffed his hands in his pockets, taking his eyes off her.

"You're an asshole. I get it. You shouldn't have to apologize for being you," Isabella paused, glancing over at him with dark eyelashes and batted them delicately at him, teasingly. He held back a laugh. "Right?" she asked turning her attention back to the band on stage.

He didn't answer her, unsure of how to respond. Instead he stepped back and watched all the men and women staring at her, then at him with wondrous eyes. It occurred to him that they didn't match. Their exteriors were all wrong and together they didn't mesh. He wanted to hate it, despise her for being so elegant and upfront but it was impossible at the moment, someday maybe. But right then, the emotion of hate for the woman was so out of reach it was nauseating.

He wanted to go change out of the same pants he'd been wearing for the past two days, just so he would warrant some sort of obvious reprieve for actually being near her. But he couldn't do that because if he left her now, he would not return. Her presence was suffocating, much stronger than the one he remembered about Tanya and he knew, away from Isabella the essence would diminish, leaving him to only feel the past. The only thing they had in common was that she didn't belong there anymore than he did, in a frame of people smaller than her, darker than her.

"That's direct for someone…" Edward trailed off, as he looked down at her bare legs, under a white, knee length skirt. Fuck me, he wanted to say. Take me away from all the things I'm running from, kiss me with those lips and shatter me with that stinging magnificence that is your shell. "Like you," he finished.

Isabella laughed, throwing her long, slim fingers in the air then crashed the palm of her hand into her chest. "Like me!" she spun around on the heels of her shoes and turned her back to him. "You, my dear, have not met anyone like me. I see it in your eyes," she said looking over her shoulder at his amused expression, eyebrows tilted slightly, lips curved, head down a little. "They give you away."

When he looked back up a few seconds later she was dancing with a slim man who she seemed to know just like the bartender, and she whispered to him in Spanish. Edward watched the man's hands glide, easily to the small of her back as he twirled Isabella around, happily. Her laugh, as cliché as it was, sounded like music, a techno mix maybe but still music. It was something he wanted to dive into but without a lifeguard.

"I gather you don't dance," Isabella called to Edward who had already sat down on the brick wall, near a bunch of dirt and dying flower shrubs. It was too dry during the summer months in Mexico to grow anything lasting. Every inch of grass ended up just being sandy roots.

Sweat trickled down his forehead and he pulled at the white cotton tee shirt he bought in the airport in Puerto Vallarta before boarding his plane to Cozumel. It stuck to him like an extra layer of skin now, against the humid, stale air swarming around him.

Isabella seemed unscathed by the air when she rejoined him, still smelling of jasmine. There wasn't an inch of sweat to be seen and he wondered if she was some figment of his imagination, something dreamt up by a demon god to taunt him. He slipped his fingers around the string of her tank top, which dangled off her shoulder and rested it back into the dip between her neck and shoulder. He touched her skin to make sure she was real. She looked down at him, surprised by his kind gesture and the mere gaze of curiosity along his face.

"Don't put me on a pedestal," Isabella mumbled, sitting down next to him, crossing her legs. She was the same height as him in her shoes and instead of it annoying him it was comforting, yet her legs still hung away from the ground.

"What?" he asked, already dazed by her words. His hands were dirty from the soil behind them and he could see it sinking into his short fingernails, painfully.

Isabella leaned closer to him, breathing warm, sultry air onto his skin and from the corner of his eye he could see those apple red, Eve-like lips pulsing with blood and life.

"I'll disappoint you," she whispered, the bumps of her words drifted down his bare neck as she made her way back to the small dancing crowd.

For some unexplainable reason he believed her, every other woman in his life had — his sister, his mother, and then Tanya. The list was endless with women who had cut into his spirit but the top three, were the ones that led him to Mexico, now to Isabella, no doubt the next woman to destroy him. At least she was being honest about it.

Edward found it ironic that out of all the nights to meet her, to finally see her as if she had been some secret tucked underneath Cozumel's land like a tiny gem waiting to be discovered, it was the one where he'd already bought a plane ticket to Jamaica for the morning.

Maybe it was for the best.

He stood, ready to head back to his hotel, but Isabella's laughter stopped him in his tracks. Like a moth to a flame, his gaze sought her twirling figure in the crowd. She stood out like a Frida Kahlo painting, colorful but filled with wretched darkness, a vampire in the making or rather a dead body for vampires to suck the life out of. He couldn't decide which one it was quite yet. The truth was he had to stay to find out.

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End file.
